Sudden cloudbursts have taken at least 10 people's lives this summer. On July 28, two adults and three children died after they were washed away in the Toga River in Kobe. That day, rain fell in the city at the rate of 31.5 mm per hour — a record amount in the past 10 years.
On Aug. 5, five people working in an underground sewage system in Toshima Ward, Tokyo, were swept away and died. Rainfall of 57.5 mm per hour was recorded near the scene just after the incident. The Meteorological Agency had issued a heavy rain and flood advisory five minutes before the incident, but it did not issue a heavy rain and flood warning until about an hour after the incident. Since lives are at stake, it is imperative that the government beef up personnel and a budget so that the agency can upgrade weather prediction capabilities.
The Meteorological Agency says the frequency of heavy rain has increased in Japan. During the 10-year period from 1967, there were 162 incidents of 50-mm-per-hour rainfall or higher per 1,000 locations recorded by the Automatic Meteorological Data Acquisition System. The figure for the 10-year period from 1998 increased to 238.